[Irish Museum of Modern Art].

Tony O’ Malley. Forward by Enrique Juncosa.

Octavo. Original Hardcover. Secondhand book in very good condition.

This book is sighed by Tony’s wife Jane O’Malley (Jane Harris).
Tony O’Malley (25 September 1913 – 20 January 2003) was an Irish artist. He was born in Callan, County Kilkenny, Ireland. O’Malley was a self-taught artist, having drawn and painted for pleasure from childhood. He worked as a bank officìal until contracting tuberculosis in the 1940s. He began painting in earnest while convalescing and, though he did at first return to bank work, he continued to paint and in 1951 he began exhibiting his work. (Wikipedia)
Since Tony O’Malley’s death in January 2003, his widow, Jane O’Malley, has taken graciously to the role of keeper of the flame. She was already well used to guarding the much-loved artist from worldly intrusions but still, it has been a huge responsibility. For though Tony O’Malley turned to painting full-time relatively late in life, and although he was dogged by ill health, he was an assiduous and prolific worker whose life revolved around the making of art. He generated a tremendous body of work in paint, graphic media and sculpture, encompassing several distinct phases and locations, and his artistic legacy is formidable.
The retrospective of his paintings, which opened at the Irish Museum of Modern Art this week, is clearly important, yet it is but one in a series of recent and forthcoming exhibitions exploring aspects of that legacy. His work has been strongly represented in shows drawn from the McClelland Collection at IMMA; Kilkenny’s Butler Gallery has previously organised a popular touring show of his early paintings, and is currently hosting an exhibition to coincide with the publication of a book of drawings selected from his sketchbooks; the Graphic Studio Gallery is showing some of his graphic work and, during November, the Taylor Galleries will exhibit previously unseen paintings. It’s a lot to keep track of. But Jane O’Malley’s devotion to Tony has been exceptional right from the start. The start was in 1969, in Cornwall, England. By then, he was an established presence in the artists’ colony in St Ives. His bold decision to leave Ireland and settle in St Ives in 1958 had wrought an almost miraculous transformation in the circumstances of his life. Against a background of provincial Ireland he had been afflicted with debilitating lung disease, had led the peripatetic life of a bank clerk in gloomy lodgings, and had painted in semi-secrecy. St Ives was a liberation. Retired from the bank, for health reasons, on a modest pension, he was free to paint and live among artists. He loved it. (Irish Times)

• Keywords: Art · Modern Art
• Language: English
• Inventory Number: 401078AB

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